Summary: Self-stabilizing Population Protocols
Dana Angluin, James Aspnes, Michael J. Fischer
and
Hong Jiang
Yale University
This paper studies self-stabilization in networks of anonymous, asynchronously interacting nodes
where the size of the network is unknown. Constant-space protocols are given for Dijkstra-style
round-robin token circulation, leader election in rings, 2-hop coloring in degree-bounded graphs,
and establishing consistent global orientation in an undirected ring. A protocol to construct a
spanning tree in regular graphs using O(log D) memory is also given, where D is the diameter of
the graph. A general method for eliminating nondeterministic transitions from the self-stabilizing
implementation of a large family of behaviors is used to simplify the constructions, and gen-
eral conditions under which protocol composition preserves behavior are used in proving their
correctness.
Categories and Subject Descriptors: C.2.4 [Computer-communication Networks]: Distributed
Systems--Distributed applications; B.8.1 [Performance; Reliability]: Reliability, Testing, and
Fault-Tolerance
General Terms: Algorithms, Reliability
Additional Key Words and Phrases: Anonymous, fairness, finite-state, population protocols, self-
stabilization, sensor networks